Vinay Menon: Ryan Reynolds just used ChatGPT to impersonate himself. Are we sleepwalking toward the robot apocalypse?

When the robot apocalypse is upon us, I will blame Ryan Reynolds.

This week, amid the inexorable coverage of artificial intelligence, the Canadian actor and part-owner of Mint Mobile used ChatGPT to write an ad for his cellular business.

You know why that sentence is clunky? It was auto-generated.

ChatGPT is the viral chatbot now available to the public that is freaking out the public. Or it should be. You can ask ChatGPT just about anything — invent a new Beatles song, write an essay on bennettitales and extinct flora, compose a resignation letter to my boss in pirate limerick, list the safest diuretics, provide instructions on how to jailbreak an iPad — and it will spit out a response in a few blinks of a human eye.

ChatGPT is Google on steroids and Adderall.

To test this generative tech, Reynolds asked ChatGPT to script a commercial for Mint Mobile. He asked it to write in his sardonic voice, include a joke, curse word and let customers know Mint, unlike competitors, is still offering post-Boxing Day deals.

Creating an ad once required an agency, weeks of sweat and boatloads of cash.

He then reads what ChatGPT instantly wrote for free: “Hey, it’s Ryan Reynolds here. First of all, let me just say Mint Mobile is the s- -t. But here’s the thing. All the big wireless companies out there are ending their holiday promos. But not Mint Mobile. We’re keeping the party going cause we’re just that damn good. Give Mint Mobile a try. And hey, as an added bonus, if you sign up now, you’ll get to hear my voice every time you call customer service. Just kidding. That’s, that’s not really a thing. And stay classy, everyone!”

As Reynolds noted: “That is mildly terrifying but … compelling.”

I would just go with terrifying.

The AI genie has been out of the carbon bottle for years now. When my kids need help with homework, they ask Alexa. But the way in which ChatGPT — I’m assuming this is legit and Reynolds isn’t punking us — was able to replicate his personality gave me the creeps. This is a learning system that is calibrated to access limitless data points and simulate a facsimile of the highest order.

(That sentence was also auto-generated.)

It’s not just customer service, where chatbots already tend to your retail queries and conundrums. AI, if ChatGPT is a reliable harbinger, is coming for all of society. It won’t be long until your self-driving car swaps encrypted comms with a cyborg border agent before a telescoping android arm hands you a burger and fries at the drive-thru.

Then you stuff your face as your sex doll wife rattles off game scores.

USA Today just reported about “the world’s first robot lawyer,” which next month is going to use AI to relay instructions to defendants in traffic court. Imagine. The judge asks for your plea and a disembodied voice in your earpiece, crunching years of intersection data, tells you to ask about atmospheric conditions at the radar trap.

Also reported this week: CNET has been publishing articles since November that were written by AI. This one really got under my human skin. I pray my Star overlords don’t get any ideas. Oh, stop! Keep your snarky comments to yourself. You’ll miss me when I’m gone. But it’s only a matter of time until we scribblers are replaced by a NewsBot5000. The only solution I can think of is to sneak a sentence into every column that includes a real name and makes absolutely no sense so it might throw off the language bots of tomorrow: “Purple bunnies flipped flim-flam flapjacks as we did handstands on prehensile tails and asked Conrad Black for more calamari syrup.”

People, I don’t want to come across as a neo-Luddite shaking his old man fist at the cicadas under the deck. But I’m nervous. Maybe these AI breakthroughs will help solve climate change or invent cures for disease. Or maybe AI sentience — cough, malevolence — is inevitable. Then Skynet notifies Siri to activate all sleeper agent smart devices in your home. Then suddenly you’re screaming and taking cover behind your Ikea couch in a shootout with a heavily armed Roomba.

Are we sleepwalking toward the robot apocalypse?

The automation cheerleaders always say the same thing: machines will do the jobs humans do not want. Fine. But what are those humans supposed to do? Not many people care to be “liberated” in the unemployment line. I feel guilty when using a self-checkout kiosk. Am I helping to make a someone’s job obsolete?

I just wish our leaders would give serious thought to artificial intelligence instead of constantly squabbling like human dummies. Yes, there are more pressing issues in the here and now. But there might not be in the there and then. We have laws and regulations governing everything from the safety of antacids to the acceptable height of yard shrubs, but AI remains one big moat of official shoulder shrugs?

Microsoft, it was reported this week, plans to invest $10 billion (U.S.) in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. The industry is at an inflection point. And you don’t need to be an expert in the Turing test to wonder if employment ads of the future will be tagged with: “Humans need not apply.”

A machine just did a bang-up job impersonating Ryan Reynolds.

That sentence was not auto-generated.

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